Psychedelic Orientalism: Representations of India in the Music of the Beatles
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PSYCHEDELIC ORIENTALISM: REPRESENTATIONS OF INDIA IN THE MUSIC OF THE BEATLES by Trent Cunningham Bachelor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2011 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This thesis was presented by Trent Cunningham It was defended on November 1st, 2011 and approved by Neepa Majumdar, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh Deane Root, Professor, University of Pittsburgh Gordon Thompson, Professor, Skidmore College Thesis Director: Andrew Weintraub, Professor, University of Pittsburgh ii Copyright © by Trent Cunningham 2011 iii PSYCHEDELIC ORIENTALISM: REPRESENTATIONS OF INDIA IN THE MUSIC OF THE BEATLES Trent Cunningham University of Pittsburgh, 2011 In 1960s Britain and America, a mystical Orientalist view of India held sway: India was seen as a land of trippy gurus holding secret, ancient, psychedelic wisdom that could liberate the young hippie from the system of stuffy, bourgeois Western values. There was of course no ethnographic basis to this view – Indian philosophers, intellectuals, and musicians in the West resented the association with drugs – but mystical India was a powerful symbol nevertheless. The Beatles‟ “Tomorrow Never Knows” was one of the earliest and most potent manifestations of what I will call “psychedelic orientalism” within rock music. A close look at this song, and others like it from the Beatles‟ middle period, will reveal some of the functions of this construction, as well as some of the motivations behind it. Studying the Beatles‟ music in a historical and cultural context will uncover certain dynamics of power, themes of appropriation and cultural hegemony. These songs were written by young musicians who came of age during the last days of the British Empire, and in writing them they were enacting a musical relationship with their former colony. A close analytical look at the unique stylistic divergences of these songs, understood through Timothy Leary‟s manual The Psychedelic Experience and Ravi Shankar‟s tutelage of George Harrison, as well as through sociological perspectives on the drug- induced experience, will reveal the role that Indian musical elements (and the ancient Oriental wisdom they reportedly represented) were made to play. Finally, the perspectives of postcolonial iv criticism will show how that role given to India was a subordinate one, built upon an attitude of power that characterized the Empire. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………………..X 1.0 ORIENTALISM IN A PSYCHEDELIC GUISE ...................................................... 1 1.1 ORIENTALISM AS CONSTRAINT AND CONTROL .................................. 3 1.2 AUTHORING THE ORIENT ............................................................................ 5 1.3 AUTHORING THE ORIENT AS ESCAPE, ELSEWHERE.......................... 7 1.4 PSYCHEDELIC ORIENTALISM AS A NEW MANIFESTATION ............. 8 2.0 POSITIONING INDIA .............................................................................................. 11 2.1 JOHN LENNON, THE BEATLES PERSONA, AND “NORWEGIAN WOOD” ............................................................................................................................. 15 2.2 GEORGE HARRISON, THE CHEEKY FAÇADE, AND “IF I NEEDED SOMEONE” ........................................................................................................................ 21 3.0 AFFECT AND APPROPRIATION IN “TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS” ...... 26 3.1 A USER’S MANUAL FOR PSYCHEDELIA ................................................. 28 3.2 PSYCHEDELIC ANALYSIS ........................................................................... 33 3.3 GROTESQUE ANALYSIS ............................................................................... 39 4.0 PSYCHEDELIA AND INDIAN TRADITION IN “WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU” ...................................................................................................................................... 43 4.1 SHANKAR AND DEFINING INDIAN MUSIC ............................................. 44 vi 4.2 “WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU” ................................................................. 47 5.0 FASHIONING THE INDIAN AS A PSYCHEDELIC MIMIC ............................ 52 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 62 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Lyrics of “Tomorrow Never Knows” and an excerpt from Leary‟s “Instructions for Use During a Psychedelic Session” ..................................................................................................... 31 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Subphrases in the “Norwegian Wood” melody ..............................................................18 Figure 2. Lead guitar and bass ostinato from the verse of “If I Needed Someone” ......................23 Figure 3. Vocal melody and accompaniment in “Tomorrow Never Knows” ................................35 Figure 4. Sentence structure in “Within You Without You” .........................................................49 ix PREFACE I have had two excellent mentors for this project. Ivan Jimenez worked generously with me in Summer 2009 on a project analyzing Beatles songs, teaching me how to make music analysis into a creative endeavor as we carried out the work. Andrew Weintraub did likewise in Summer 2011, as I expanded my project beyond music analysis – he introduced me to wide swaths of literature on cultural criticism, and guided me carefully through my first attempts to write in this vein. Andrew has also been tremendously supportive as an editor of this thesis, equally encouraging and critical. This project would not have been possible without an abundance of helpful input from Jocelyn Monahan, and I would also like to thank Deane Root and Anna Nisnevich for their helpful comments in the early stages. In the final stages, I would like to thank Deane Root, Neepa Majumdar, and Gordon Thompson for their enthusiasm and thoughtful critiques at my defense. The University of Pittsburgh Honors College has supported this project generously, with two Brackenridge Research Fellowships (Summer and Fall 2011) and full tuition funding for the Fall 2011 semester. My work with Ivan Jimenez was supported by a Summer Undergraduate Research Award from the School of Arts and Sciences. Of course my first and greatest support has come from my parents, Robert and Pegi Cunningham. x 1.0 ORIENTALISM IN A PSYCHEDELIC GUISE In the summer of 1965, John and George lay blissed out by the pool, enjoying what George described as a “very concentrated version of the best feeling I‟d ever had” (Spitz 2005: 360). They were on their second acid trip, the first they took wittingly, and on the stereo was a Ravi Shankar recording of Hindustani classical music. The two Beatles listened to the tambura drone, tabla drumming, and elaborate sitar phrasings – what must have sounded endlessly exotic and intoxicating – in order to give their trip a suitably otherworldly soundtrack. In the following years, after this cohabitation of Indian sounds and drug effects found its way into Beatles songs, the grouping together of psychedelic drugs and Indian music would be solidified in the British and American popular imagination. In 1966 the song “Tomorrow Never Knows,” a progenitor of psychedelic rock, blended the Indian drone with the sound of a wild drug-induced state, and the two seemed to belong together. Some forty years later, Ian Macdonald, author of the best-selling Revolution in the Head, must have thought likewise when he made this untroubled connection: “[Tomorrow Never Knows] simultaneously draws attention to mind-altering drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient” (Macdonald 2008: 190). In 1960s Britain and America, a mystical Orientalist view of India held sway: India was seen as a land of trippy gurus holding secret, ancient, psychedelic wisdom that could liberate the 1 young hippie from the system of stuffy, bourgeois Western values.1 There was of course no ethnographic basis to this view – as we will see, Indian philosophers, intellectuals, and musicians in the West resented the association with drugs – but mystical India was a powerful symbol nevertheless. The Beatles‟ “Tomorrow Never Knows” was one of the earliest and most potent manifestations of what I will call “psychedelic orientalism” within rock music. A close look at this song, and others like it from the Beatles‟ middle period, will reveal some of the functions of this construction, as well as some of the motivations behind it. Studying the Beatles‟ music in a historical and cultural context will uncover certain dynamics of power, themes of appropriation and cultural hegemony. These songs were written by young musicians who came of age during the last days of the British Empire, and in writing them they were enacting a musical relationship with their former colony. A close analytical look at the unique stylistic divergences of these songs, understood through Timothy Leary‟s manual The Psychedelic Experience and Ravi Shankar‟s tutelage of George Harrison, as well as through sociological perspectives on the drug- induced experience, will reveal the role that Indian musical elements (and the ancient Oriental wisdom they reportedly represented) were made to play. Finally, the perspectives of postcolonial criticism will show how that role given to India was